Misgivings

by Donn Cortez

  Wolfe hopped over the candy-cane fence surrounding the animatronic reindeer and walked over to the nearest wall. An emergency light was mounted about ten feet above the ground; he looked around for something to climb on and finally clambered onto the back of one of the reindeer. He stood, balancing carefully, and used a multitool to pry free the top of the battery that provided power to the light. When it was off, he pulled a salt shaker out of his pocket, filled now with baking soda he’d gotten from the hotel kitchen. He sprinkled a small amount into the battery.

  Nothing happened. He added more, but there was still no reaction.

  He sighed, replaced the top of the battery, and climbed back down. Keppler was waiting for him by the door.

  “Look, I can’t keep these people here all night,” Keppler said. “I mean, what does the power being cut off have to do with this event? All that happened was the lights went off for a few minutes. Nobody was killed or kidnapped or robbed. I understand you guys wanting to control a crime scene—but where’s the crime?”

  “Right in this room,” Wolfe said. “I’m sure of it. The battery acid in all the emergency lights here has been replaced with something else—probably plain water. I found traces of battery acid at another site linked to the Patrick homicide; this must be where it came from.”

  “Okay, I’m with you so far—somebody wanted this room completely dark for a few minutes. But unless you can tell me why—”

  “I know, I know. These aren’t the kind of people who like to be told what to do. Just keep a lid on them for a little while longer, okay?”

  “I’ll try,” Keppler said.

  Wolfe rejoined Tripp outside and explained what he’d found.

  “Yeah, something’s definitely up,” Tripp said. “But I’ll be damned if I know what.”

  “I’m going to process the electrical room,” Wolfe said. “Call me on my cell if anything happens.”

  Delko wasn’t crazy about working on Christmas Eve, but he couldn’t go celebrate with his family while somebody was trying to kill Horatio. Horatio was family, too.

  He didn’t bother rechecking the fingerprint data from the Pathan assault—if Calleigh had done it and Horatio had reviewed it, the data was solid. He and Horatio agreed that the key to the case was Francis Buccinelli.

  He studied the picture from the Detention Center’s security camera. Beard, glasses, thick hair; it could easily be a disguise. But whoever Buccinelli really was, Pathan had managed to contact him while in custody. The arresting officer figured he’d done it in the hospital.

  Delko thought it was time to pay a visit to Dade Memorial. At least it’s guaranteed to be open on Christmas Eve, he thought.

  He ran into Calleigh as he was headed for the elevator. “Hey,” he said. “On your way home?”

  “Afraid not,” Calleigh sighed. “I’m still working on the Villanova case. The body’s being shipped back to Brazil the day after Christmas—apparently it’s hard to get a flight before then. His widow is going to spend the holiday in a hotel room, probably dealing with paperwork, and I still can’t give her any answers. I feel too guilty to go home.”

  “I know how you feel,” Delko said. “Knowing that whoever tried to kill Horatio is still out there . . . I just can’t imagine putting that on hold while I watch It’s a Wonderful Life for the umpteenth time.”

  “Where are you headed, if not home?”

  He told her. “If I can figure out how he made the call, maybe I can track it back to its source. And figure out who Francis Buccinelli really is.”

  “At least you have a name, even if it’s fake. My killer might as well be the tooth fairy for all the proof I have.”

  “Don’t give up,” he said.

  “You either,” she answered with a smile.

  * * *

  Wolfe was almost finished processing the electrical room when his cell phone rang. It was Tripp, with bad news.

  “We’re letting them go. I just got a call from the chief of police himself, who just got a call from someone in the ballroom. Unless you can give me a solid reason to hang on to any of them, this party’s over.”

  “Sorry, Frank. I haven’t found anything down here that might tell us what’s going on. I’ll keep looking, but I’m just about done.”

  “Sounds like we both are, kid.” Tripp hung up.

  Wolfe sighed. He was so close to cracking the case he could feel it . . . he had all the pieces, all he had to do was put them together. He slumped against the wall, staring at nothing in particular; his eyes fell on a small, winking green light on a panel of equipment. Nice to see something’s working, he thought gloomily. Though I’m almost as tired of green as I am of red . . . Red and green. Two elements of the compound known as christmasium.

  Red and green. For some reason, he couldn’t get the colors out of his head. Something was nagging at him.

  And suddenly, he had it.

  He called Tripp on his cell phone. “Frank? Listen carefully . . .”

  After he’d told Tripp what to do, he headed for the elevator. He asked a few questions at the front desk, then headed up to the penthouse floor.

  He found the maid in the area beside the service elevator, refilling her cart with cleaning supplies; according to Fergusson, she was the same maid who took care of the penthouse suite every day. Wolfe showed her his badge and asked if the laundry on the cart had come from the suite.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Why?”

  “I’m going to have to take a closer look at it,” he said. Public area, in plain sight.

  The maid, a young woman with blond streaks dyed into her hair, shrugged. “Fine by me. Kinda smelly, though.”

  “Oh? What kind of smell?”

  “The bed-wetting kind. Kid’s got a nervous bladder, I guess.”

  “Right. Well, it’s a lot of excitement for someone her age.” Wolfe bundled up the sheets in a plastic laundry bag, thanked her, and went back down to the lobby.

  “Merry Christmas to me,” he muttered to himself in the elevator. “I think I finally have an idea what’s going on . . .”

  The hospital ward was quiet this evening, a carol playing softly on a radio somewhere and a small artificial tree glowing with multicolored lights on the nurses’ station. Delko was in luck; the room Abdus Sattar Pathan had been put in after the police brought him in had one other occupant, and he was still there.

  “We normally don’t put criminals and regular patients together,” the nurse told him. She was young and Hispanic, with chubby cheeks and an overbite. “But we were short of room, he was unconscious and handcuffed to the bed. We didn’t think there’d be a problem.”

  “How did the other person in the room feel about it?”

  She looked a little uncertain. “Mister Johnson? Well, he’s comatose, so we couldn’t exactly ask his permission.”

  “Is there a phone in that room?”

  “There’s a jack, but you have to arrange to have access. There’s a fee.”

  “Are Mister Johnson’s personal effects stored in the room?”

  “Yes. There’s a small cabinet for clothes.”

  “I’d like to take a look at that, please.”

  She led him to the room. A black man in his forties or fifties lay in one bed, an IV drip taped to the back of his hand, a softly beeping monitor beside him. The other bed was occupied by a much older man, with a wreath of white hair spread out on the pillow around his head like a halo. He was also hooked up to an IV and biomonitor.

  The nurse indicated the black man. “This is Mister Johnson. His things are in that cabinet over there.”

  Delko went over, knelt down, and opened the cabinet. Inside were a pair of shoes, some clothes, and a hat. He searched through the pockets until he found what he was looking for: a cell phone.

  He pulled it out carefully. He might be able to pull a print off it, but he was more interested in the last number called.

  He hit redial. After a few rings, a voice-mail message kicked in.


  “Hello. This is the Brilliant Batin. I’m currently unavailable, but please leave a message and I will contact you . . .”

  Delko hung up and stared at the phone as if it had just bit him. “He called himself ?”

  By the time Wolfe got back to the ballroom, all the guests were gone. The only people left were the film crew, busy packing up the last of their equipment, Chuck Keppler, and Anitra Farnsworth. She was sitting on the steps of the Santa throne, her shoes off, looking tired but happy, talking to the security chief.

  Wolfe walked up and said, “No more filming today?”

  “God, I hope not,” Anitra said. “I just want to go upstairs and go to sleep. Coral will have me up at the crack of dawn, and then—well, I don’t know what Jeff has planned, but I’m sure it’ll be impressive. I’m guessing Santa himself will show up to shower us with gifts.”

  “Well, you never can tell where old Saint Nick will show up,” Wolfe said. “Or which one, for that matter.”

  Anitra frowned. “I don’t get it.”

  “Well, there’s more than one Santa Claus. Some are nice—and some are naughty. For instance, the Santa that was here tonight—he wasn’t so nice.”

  “Hey, we checked that guy out,” Keppler said, suddenly looking worried.

  “No, you checked out a guy named Kyle Dickerson,” Wolfe said. “And you’re right, he was clean. His biggest crime was probably firing his agent . . . see, Dickerson used the name Kingsley Patrick as an actor. But he was down on his luck, so far down he took a gig playing Santa Claus. He was too embarrassed to use his stage name, so he used his real one.”

  “Patrick was the name of your stiff, right?” Keppler said.

  “Yeah. Someone killed him, stole the ID badge he was given when he was hired, and played Santa in his place.”

  Wolfe looked Anitra in the eye, then let his gaze wander a little lower—to her neck. “That’s a beautiful necklace. I’m guessing that as part of the show, the director arranged the same sort of deal movie stars get for high-profile premieres—the loan of a very expensive piece of jewelry in exchange for publicity. How much are those emeralds worth?”

  “Two point seven million,” Keppler said quietly. He was looking at Anitra in a very different way now; it seemed more sad than angry to Wolfe.

  “You were sitting in Santa’s lap when the lights went out,” Wolfe said. “One of you used a radio-controlled detonator to set off the bomb and douse the lights, letting you swap the real emeralds for fakes. The ones you’re wearing right now were manufactured by you and your associate, using a method called the Czochralski process. When I found traces of yttrium oxide at the storefront your partner was using as a base of operations, I couldn’t figure out what it was for; it’s used to make red phosphor dots for TV screens, but the color I should have been thinking about was green. Once you added aluminum oxide and melted the two together in an iridium crucible, you created a compound called yttrium aluminum garnet—one of the simulants used for synthetic emeralds.”

  Anitra’s face hardened. She got to her feet and stared right back at Wolfe defiantly. “Well, there’s no point in denying it—I’m wearing the damn thing, aren’t I? But don’t expect me to pretend I’m sorry.”

  “Jesus, Anitra,” Keppler said. “How could you think you’d get away with something like—”

  “Don’t you dare lecture me,” she said coldly. “I don’t owe you or Jeff or the damn studio a thing. Am I supposed to be grateful for letting them take pity on me? Take the poor little white-trash girl and give her a taste of the good life, parade me around in front of the whole world while I act all big-eyed and awestruck? None of you give a damn about me or Coral—you were just using me. Well, I decided to use you right back.”

  “You did more than that,” Wolfe said. “You killed an innocent man—and you used Coral’s medication to do it. She takes imipramine to control her bed-wetting, doesn’t she? And you take phenelzine as an antidepressant.

  “What was the plan for your getaway? Slip onto a boat and head for the Bahamas, hoping that the switch wouldn’t be noticed until after the holidays?”

  “Something like that.”

  “We’ve already arrested your partner in the Santa suit as he left the hotel,” Wolfe said. “Had the emeralds on him, and a bump key—one I’m sure will match the locks at Patrick’s apartment and the storefront you were using, too. Tell me, did he approach you with this idea, or did you reach out to him?”

  “I think,” Anitra said quietly, “that’s a question my lawyer should really answer.”

  “Have it your way. But there are harder questions coming, and not from me. The person you’re ultimately going to have to answer to is your daughter.”

  The defiance on Anitra’s face seeped away, leaving weariness and despair in its wake. “I know,” she whispered. “I know. I was doing this for her. I couldn’t stand her living one more day in a crappy, run-down apartment, growing up thinking it was normal, it was all she could aspire to. I wanted to give her her dreams . . .”

  “Instead,” Wolfe said quietly, “you took away her mother.”

  18

  CHRISTMAS DAY DAWNED GRAY AND CHILLY in Miami, though Horatio knew that later hours would bring higher temperatures. He’d gotten up early, despite not getting home until late; he’d still been at the lab when Wolfe had come in with the news about the Santa bust. Horatio had congratulated him and then told him to go home, feeling just a little like Scrooge sending Bob Cratchit off to his family.

  But Scrooge had found his redemption. Horatio still felt as if he were searching for his.

  He went in to work, though the building was only minimally staffed; most of the rooms were as empty as a high school during spring break. The labs seemed as sterile and cold as the morgue.

  He had gone over the Pathan case until his head pounded, but there were still questions he simply couldn’t answer. He wound up looking at the other cases his team was working on, just to distract himself.

  The Santa bust was solid; Wolfe had recovered both kinds of antidepressants from Anitra Farnsworth’s hotel room, and her accomplice had been arrested in possession of the stolen jewels. Her daughter, Coral, was still at the hotel; the staff had volunteered to take care of her until relatives could pick her up tomorrow.

  Horatio sighed. Christmas morning would never mean the same thing to one little girl again . . .

  The door to Coral’s room opened slowly. She wasn’t asleep; she’d woken up fifteen minutes ago and had lain there, eyes wide-open, almost quivering with excitement, ever since. She was waiting, very patiently, for her mother to tell her it was time.

  She sat bolt upright in bed—but the figure standing in the door wasn’t her mom.

  It was Santa Claus.

  “Ho, ho, ho!” he boomed merrily. “Merry Christmas, Coral! You’ve been very good this year, so I came to give you your gifts in person!”

  “Santa!” she squealed, jumping out of bed. “Mommy, Mommy, Santa’s here!” She ran forward, scooted around Saint Nick, and darted into the next room—the one with the big Christmas tree and all the presents under it.

  And waiting for her was her mother.

  She was dressed kind of funny, in a bright orange jumpsuit and a Santa hat, but Coral had gotten used to that—ever since her mother had started hanging around with those people who took pictures of her all the time, she’d had to wear all sorts of silly costumes. Sometimes Coral got to wear a costume, too, like the time they both dressed up like cowboys and rode horses.

  She ran over and jumped into her mom’s lap. “Merry Christmas, Mommy!”

  “Merry Christmas, sweetheart,” her mother whispered.

  Coral was so used to the film crew she hardly noticed them anymore—but today they were nowhere in sight. There was just a man Coral didn’t recognize, a man in a black suit with red hair.

  “Where is everybody?” Coral asked. “You said there’d be lots of people.”

  “Not today,” her mother said. “
Today is just for us. Me and you and Santa.”

  “That’s right!” Santa said, striding into the room and picking up a present. Coral thought he sounded a little like Mister Keppler, but happier. “Now who’s this present for . . .”

  “Who are you?” Coral asked the man with red hair.

  “Me? I guess I’m one of Santa’s helpers. I just came along to make sure you have a very, very, merry Christmas. You think you can do that?”

  “Okay,” she said.

  And then her mother looked at the man and said, “Thank you,” in a voice Coral recognized—it meant she was going to cry. Coral looked at her mother anxiously, but she didn’t seem sad; there was a big smile on her face.

  “I didn’t do it for you,” the red-haired man said.

  Coral started opening presents. The next time she looked up, the red-haired man was gone, but there were more presents to open and she forgot about him pretty quick.

  Until he came back later and told her her mother had to go away.

  Calleigh found Horatio in the break room, sipping a cup of coffee and studying a file.

  “There you are,” she said. “Now why am I not surprised to find you here on Christmas Day?”

  Horatio smiled. “I had a few things to take care of . . . but I didn’t expect to see you here.”

  She pulled up a chair and sat down. “I snuck out early, told Dad I forgot something at work. He understands.”

  “I think I do, too.”

  “I see you’re reading the Villanova file. Checking up on me?”

  Horatio looked pained. “Calleigh, I have the utmost faith in you. You know that, right?”

  “I—of course I do, Horatio. I’m sorry, I was just teasing. To tell the truth, the case is the reason I’m here.”

  His smile came back. “Duly noted. Actually, I was looking over this case file because I was feeling frustrated about the Pathan investigation.”

  “Looking for a little second hand Duquesne insight?”

  “I suppose I was.”

  “Well, you’ve got the real thing, now—but I don’t know how much inspiration I can give you. I’m stuck in a cul-de-sac with Hector Villanova, and I have no idea how to get out.”